Under the Kesiera
by Fedelm
Summary: What is it to be truly helpless? Moiraine finds the fight to survive isn't always enough. Chapters 24 are up.
1. Drifting

Part One

It was almost like she was floating in a bath, with only her mouth and nose above the surface. But there were no currents of water to swirl against her skin. No warm candlelight glowed comfortingly from behind a screen. In fact there was nothing to be seen at all. It was like the memory of darkness that had ended all of her nightmares leading up to this day. Though, there was no sense of time anymore. Perhaps it was weeks she'd been here, or years. She was adrift in the void, with only the sound of her breath, and a dull, thudding heartbeat to keep her company. She could not channel, nor even sense the Source as anything but a memory.

Fear would not help her now.

She instead focused all of her energy on moving, making another sound, seeing or smelling something. No one would come for her. She remembered what had happened after the burning light, but nothing she thought of could help her to escape. Her life was forfeit, because of the woman she'd come in with - the foulness of that woman's soul. There had been no wishes, no chance of going back the way she had come. Only this. This, and she could not remember how to move her limbs.

It could not have been an eternity that she struggled within herself to escape, because she found that after some time she'd stopped. Surely she'd been here for years. Decades had probably passed with her like this, with no one left in the outside world to remember that she was here. She would just have to regain her strength to try again to free herself.

She thought of the circumstances that led her here, going over her memories of the docks with the proverbial fine-toothed comb. Time must have gone by, for then she played games with herself to keep her mind occupied. Stones boards were visualized in front of her, moves played out with precision. She counted each breath until reaching into the thousands, and then multiplied that by the number of times her life had been in danger in the past, and then by the number Lan's had. She did it again so that she could be sure of the solution.

The games frustrated her.

Her breathing continued on, even and measured. She found that she couldn't alter it's rhythm, or use her mouth to speak. It was as if her breathing existed somewhere outside of herself. It didn't seem to matter with what fierceness she fought. It was as if there was nothing to move. There wasn't even a chill running down her spine to accompany her uneasiness.

She was here, in this place, because there was no other way. She had always known that at any moment her life could be taken away, in one way or another. She and Siuan both would have been stilled, had other Aes Sedai discovered what they knew.

So much of life was built on chance. Even the prophecies may not have been fulfilled, had errors been made, and different paths been chosen. But what had occurred was for Rand's benefit. He would survive to fight in the Last Battle, and be victorious. She held onto that thought for a long time, allowing it to steady her emotions.

The Eelfinn must be holding her like this because they needed something from her. Memories of Matrim's weapon surfaced in her mind. She'd gone into his tent once, after discovering what his foxhead medallion could do. The weapon was there, close to his bedroll. She studied it, and the boy. He had gotten much from them. She wished she knew what he'd done while there.

They placed importance on memory, and time. Perhaps that was what they wanted with her, to drain her of herself.

She must not forget who she was, and so made herself remember her life, and the lives of people around her. When she was a little girl she'd fallen out of the boat her parents had hired to take a pleasure sail around a lake in the south of Cairhien. The water had been warm but her body was frozen in disbelief at suddenly being immersed. Water was everywhere around her.

She remembered how beautiful it was, with the sunlight dancing through the eddies. They made blue-green swirls. She thought they were water spirits, as in the stories Innloine had read to her. She was in love with this new world, even as her body sank further below. Her father was like a great beast breaking through the water when he dove in to save her. It was almost comical. In fact, she'd felt completely unafraid about the whole event, until sometime later, when the panic of the others finished settling in. Reality had been what emerged from that. The knowledge of death was revealed through...almost a veil childhood had woven for her.

Other memories surfaced. Her lovely mother, who sang while embroidering. Her sisters. Laman, and Caraline. Siuan, and Lan. Rand. Hundreds of others. Some of those people she had saved, others she'd had killed or worse, and some she failed to save at all. She saw Thom's eyes again, sparkling with humor and so blue, clear enough to see beyond faces and motives. It wasn't true that they had never danced, for she had danced while his fingers did, moving over the strings of his harp.

She saw these things, and all of her life that had followed. She simply had not been good enough to stop all of the worst things. So much of it was filled with pain and struggling. And, it was not over. They chose to keep her here, alive, forever. She wasn't sure how much longer she could keep hold of herself. The thought of drifting away became enticingly sweet, though to where she did not know. There was no longer a use for her.

But, she simply could not allow herself to give up. She wondered if this was her final failing. Why should she continue to fight the same paradox of struggle and embrace. It became clear that life was a spiral, and not a circle. The world was full of them in every form, from leaf to woman's face. It was a sign of the Pattern. It was not a true wheel that completes itself, or a line stretching into infinity, but an undulating curl that twists and repeats to create a great Lace of nature. And, after all, where was there left to go but down into the center of this spiral? Nothing can truly be destroyed. She would only be carrying on her work in another form. That could not be giving up.

She pondered these things slowly, all the while feeling as if a veil of another kind were opening in her mind, allowing her to understand.

"Indeed," she thought, "at the end of it all there is no choice left but to follow the path we all must take." In just a little while she would do so. It would be alright to hang on to this heartbeat, breath, and thought for a short time before she went away. Time was without boundaries in this place so close to the Pattern.

Later, she heard them. They came in the way of deep thunderous rumblings, of shouting and metal. She felt something tugging at her, and a burning smoke causing her to cough. They were pulling her out of the dark. They couldn't be her companions, for they must all have died during the Last Battle some time ago. It was then that fear engulfed her. They wanted to take her, take what was left of her mind and soul before she'd had the chance to let those things go. She was helpless.

She tried to fight them as she woke, with every strength she had left within her. The light was blinding. It was burning her eyes as much as the smoke hurt her lungs. Someone was saying a name. Was it hers?

Thom Merrilin brought her into the world. He held the woman, his Aes Sedai, to his chest, not knowing whether or not she could see him. Moiraine's eyes had opened only to stare blindly upwards. He bent closer, whispering into her ear.

"Moiraine, I've come for you."

The sounds of Mat and company fighting the last of the Eelfinn grew worse. The stench of the creatures blood filled the air, and sounds of their dying shrieks reached a crescendo as the last small stick of firework powder finally exploded.

Moiraine's scream came out as a soft sound, barely heard, and like a melody broken. 


	2. On the Way Out

Part Two

"Move, there's not much time!" Mat's cry barely rose above the deafening noise of fire and dying screams. The other members of their group, Birgitte and Juilin, came from opposite sides of the room to flank Thom. He still held the barely conscious Aes Sedai in his arms as if protecting some part of himself that had been badly wounded. Moiraine's eyes roved about the firelit room without resting in one spot for long, though it was hard to tell if she understood what was happening. The arm that held tightly around Thom's neck and back was the only other part of her body that seemed to have life left within.

Brigitte shouted above the roar of the flames as they began to move toward the south wall, "Everything is collapsing. Move fast and stay together."

Indeed, everything did seem to be collapsing. The walls and pillars around them were melting and folding in on themselves in a way that should have been utterly impossible. Large cavernous halls and smaller rooms alike would suddenly seem to become different rooms that were not on fire for an instant before changing once more. This new effect was even more dizzying to the eye, though whatever illusion the Eelfinn had put into place to confuse visitors did not seem to be working properly. If it were not for the shortcut Thom and his group had made they would have no hope of finding their way out.

Dead creatures lay scattered along their path as they ran. Others lay propped in doorways, prone and stupefied. On these Eelfinn's laps were short lengths of light iron chains. They held the creatures in place with no need to lock them to anything.

The company slowed their running enough to step carefully over the Eelfinn in doorways, not wanting to disturb them. The creatures were the only things keeping the doorways from disappearing entirely from the walls. It had been only luck that they'd found out how to open up passages in that way, after Mat tried to use a short length of chain to bind a male and force him to guide them.

Mat and the male had stumbled back into a wall that shifted to become an entrance to another room. They had to find their own way after all, but this fairly straightforward path of doorways back to the entrance was a convenient cheat. It was certainly lucky for them now, as the entire place looked on the verge of turning itself inside out.

Thom called for a brief halt in a room that was not as badly damaged as the others. The room was quiet enough to hear the reverberating chords of harp music that stubbornly resisted fading once Thom had played them, hours before. Things did not do what they should here.

He shifted Moiraine in his grasp in order to check on her breathing. She didn't seem to be doing much of it. Her head was now pressed into the front of his coat, the tendons in her neck straining with effort. Juilin pressed a hand overtop of her chest, leaning in close to listen to anything wrong there while Birgitte and Mat both stood impatiently scanning the area around them.

"It's shallow. Heart's faint." Juilin fumbled at his belt to retrieve a small flask, encumbered a bit by the few loops of chains that weighed across the front of him, "Should we try giving her some water?"

Birgitte shifted her weight from one foot to the other as she shook her head, "No food or drink in these lands." Her silver bow was knocked with a wooden arrow, it's tip wrapped in cloth that had been dipped in lamp oil. More of the wooden arrows sat in the quiver alongside her customary silver ones, though the supply of each was dwindling low.

"Something is wrong.." The sudden pronouncement from the Aes Sedai startled all of them, though it wasn't hard in the state they were in. Her voice was rough and low pitched, sounding unlike herself.

She would not say more, and it was unwise to remain still for long.

Moiraine did seem to be straining, but it was more like she was trying to keep something in rather than struggle to breathe the further along they ran. He could feel the heat of her through his coat, even hotter by proximity than the flames threatening the party all around. The feeling from her moist forehead pressing on his chest burned through the cloth as if she had a high fever, though being Aes Sedai she could not possibly be sick. It was one more thing in the plethora of worries for Thom.

Thom was at the center of the party at first, but it was difficult to see over Moiraine to the floor below while running. This had caused him to fall to the back of the group with her to avoid tripping and landing on the small woman. As fragile as she felt to him he was afraid the force would break a bone or three.

'That's all she needs,' he though ruefully, 'for this fool of a man to break her to pieces.'

The room the party had first entered through the Tower of Ghenji was still there, undamaged and seemingly untouched. The doorway out into the true world wasn't at all like the ones Mat had seen before, as he'd told them earlier, but just a flat window among a panel of others. The windows looked out into an impossible garden filled with objects that could be neither animal nor plant, and yet seemed to live. Birgitte had told them that the way leading out from the Tower of Ghenji could change at any time, but this one still had that shimmering quality about it, so it was likely it hadn't changed.

There wasn't time to decide who had to go first. Birgitte was in the lead, then Mat and Juilin. They went in one right after the other. Thom had only just leapt through the doorway into the room to see Juilin disappear in swirling white when something caught around the gleeman's foot. Moiraine tumbled out of his grasp onto the floor below as he staggered to keep from landing atop her.

Moiraine hit the floor, a rasping sound low in her throat. She scrambled backwards away from him, even then with a kind of injured feline grace. Her eyes locked on their way out. The fires had already caught up with them. The room that they were standing in began to bulge with the force on the other side.

The Eelfinn in the doorway was what had tripped them. It sat with it's hand still clutched tightly around Thom's boot, mouth moving as if trying to force words out of itself. Thom pulled his foot out of his boot - good leather that - to avoid the trouble of prying it's fingers loose. He went to Moiraine, who was staring from the Eelfinn back to the panel of windows marking their exit.

"It is wrong," She leaned on one arm with a hand to her temple as if trying not to crumple to the floor. The sudden burst of movement had taken what little was left of her stamina.

"What is, Moiraine?" He lifted her up to her feet, holding her steady with a hand around her slim waist. Time was growing short. From the look of the room it was only a minute more, perhaps less, until they were consumed by the blaze.

Moiraine shook her head, rubbing at both temples now, "Saidar...it is not right to go."

She looked like a woman at the end of a long illness, with veins standing out starkly against a sweat slicked face as pale as death itself. The air in the room began to waver with blistering heat. Flames suddenly burst out on the Eelfinn in the doorway. It began to shriek. She did not notice.

Thom pulled her with him to the exit, though it was not where it should have been. He was sure it was the window to the far right that Mat and company had gone through, and now the middle pane was the one shimmering with light.

"No, Thom. Leave me. I cannot stop what is coming..."

He could feel the waves of flame come into the room. Moiraine's hair lifted slightly, the ends of a few strands bursting alight. Something else seemed to be rushing into the room as well; some other sort of force. It was no matter that the exit had changed. They must go through it. To stay there surely meant death.

"You will not die," he promised her.

Thom leapt into the exit with her still in his grasp, holding tightly. There was no time, and no choice.


	3. Crashing the Party

Part Three

It was like being squeezed through a funnel with a bright light at the other end, and then flattened and chopped to infinitesimal pieces. They remained like that for a timeless second before being hastily thrown back together again. Going back through to the other side took them past a prism of colors, a whirling schism of shapes and sounds. It was hard to tell if their legs gave out or if they were thrown to the ground below them when they arrived.

Long colorful silk streamers lay heaped on the ground around them, and the sounds and smells of a festival followed along. The chorus of women singing stopped moments after Thom lifted his head.

This was surely not the uninhabited lands outside the Tower of Ghenji, nor any other place he'd ever seen. He and Moiraine both were at the foot of some kind of dias. A half circle of standing women stared down at them with tattooed faces.

Moiraine moaned, both hands now clutching her head near her temples. The tattooed women's eyes, already wide with shock, bulged as they swung their heads to look directly at the Blue. Some of them hastily took a step back away from her.

Another woman knelt there as well, dressed differently then the other women and lacking any tattoos. She was almost nose to nose with Thom. Her eyes were wide as well, though with what seemed like adoration instead of fear. White blossoms lay scattered around this woman, with more in a bowl next to her.

Thom got to his feet, helping Moiraine up alongside him. They were in some sort of roofed pavilion surrounded by several hundred other people, at least.

The tattooed women backed further away from them. One with a curved knife in her hand whispered, "It is no use. It cannot be shielded."

Thom addressed them urgently, "She needs your help. She's been wounded."

Moiraine let out a startling cry, pushing Thom roughly to the ground by her feet with a force he would not have considered possible from such a small woman. White light ripped through the roof of the pavilion and down to her and everything nearby. Thom threw an arm over his face as a fierce rushing sound like a tempest raging followed.

He'd heard of women taking in too much of the Power, knew that the bolt from the heavens would destroy her and everything else near. There was no way to protect her. With what he considered his last thought Thom wished that she would be saved.

Strangely, even seconds later he did not feel dead. He lowered his arm carefully, musing to himself that he still could very likely be a ghost by this point. Except - his eyes hurt like a bloody hot awl had been shoved at them and his knee felt like there was an uncomfortable pebble underneath. Moiraine too, still standing next to him, seemed a bit too dirty and unkempt to be a spirit of the dead. She was panting for air, and leaning against the statue behind them.

There was a small noise, like a mouse being stepped on. Thom looked toward the source of the sound to discover the woman who had been kneeling with them before. The petals still lay in precisely the same spots around her form. Everything else past her was ash. The building was gone, even the streamers on the ground must have been converted to dust - and the hundreds of people, they all seemed to be dust too. Something Moiraine must have done had to have protected them. There was no way any of them should have survived what she'd...well, what had happened.

He decide to ignore the woman lying prostrate for the moment in favor of the one he'd gone through all the trouble for in the first place. His knees both felt a bit stiff as he stood, and the thought of the hundreds of people now intermingled with the building blowing away in the gentle breeze of this fine day made him a little dizzy. Moiraine gave him a sidelong look, still attempting to recover her breath.

"I told you to leave me," as Moiraine spoke the only other survivor squeaked a little louder, followed by a thunk of what may have been her forehead hitting the ground, "I told you I could not control Saidar."

The woman still managed to look like a Queen before her assembly even covered with soot. He frowned slightly. The thought of what had happened was truly staggering. And they had lived through it, hopefully unharmed.

"Not in so many words you didn't," The gentleness of his tone softened his words somewhat, "And I wouldn't have left you, Moiraine, regardless of what you said. Did you burn yourself out?"

Moiraine shook her head slightly, then looked past him out into the scene beyond. She stared for a long moment before pulling her gaze back toward him. Her mouth opened as if to speak, but the other woman below suddenly burst forth a profusion of senseless words, "I am far too lowly a creature to be allowed to bask in Your Effervescent Light. Your splendor is like the sun and stars. The gift of Your presence overshadows the night itself, Most Holy Slayer of the Worthy Ones."


	4. Splendid One

Part Four

Moiraine looked down at the woman as if she'd sprouted another head from her ear. The woman was still speaking, all in a mumbled rush beneath her as her forehead still pressed into the ground. Moiraine made a motion to sit on the raised dias of the statue. Thom quickly moved a bowl of fruit from beneath, grabbing an apple and pear from the contents before setting it back down next to other various plates and bowls of food. He tucked the fruit in his pockets for later.

"Please cease your flattery, child." Moiraine wiped a bit of soot from her forehead with an equally sooty hand, leaving a long smear in it's place, "Whatever it is that your Ayyad have told you is worth this nonsense is not here."

Thom nodded to himself, agreeing silently with Moiraine's assessment of where they were. This had to be Shara, if the stories of Jain Farstrider were at all truthful. It wasn't often one came across a group of women with tattooed faces.

'Although now all of those women are gone. By the Light, I hope she didn't kill an entire race of channeling women in an unknown continent.' or, as Thom continued his thought, perhaps it would have been better if she had killed them all. Whoever was left wouldn't be pleased to find out what Moiraine had done already. He was relieved that her faculties seemed mostly in order, however, at least enough so that she could reason things such as that out. He was worried that there was more wrong with her than she was letting on.

The woman finally lifted her forehead from the ground, and then the rest of her torso. She was quite heavy with child. It was possible that she had perhaps more then one under that impressive girth. Thom wondered how she'd managed to press herself so low before.

"I understand, Your Wise Benevolence," The woman held her hands out to Moiraine, palms pressed together with fingertips pointing upwards, "How may this body of so much human dirt serve Your whim?"

Thom held out a hand to forestall Moiraine, taking on a slow and clear way of speaking as he addressed the woman, "We need a place for Her Holiness to rest," Thom leaned down to her to emphasize the look of letting her in on a secret, "A private place where no one else will know of the arrival of the Splendid Drop of Dew from the Heavens."

The woman suddenly frowned, looking most unimpressed with him, "I doubt you are anything more then a toad to her. You should not be speaking so of Her Grace. She should smite you from the realms of the Reborn Ones." She was looking at his shoeless foot. It was a good sock, with only a few holes.

Moiraine's voice was quite calm as she spoke, though her dark eyes seem to flash, "Firstly, stop all of this 'Splendid One' speechmaking. It borders on murderously irritating. Secondly, my guardian is correct in that we do need a private place where we may rest."

The woman finally assented, using Thom's arm for support in rising. He took a last look back at the statue before following the other two. It was half woman, half cat of some kind, and all of white marble. It's human arms were outstretched, holding a golden disk in one hand and a farmer's scythe in the other. The head was that of a cat, with mouth open in a roar. The beast's eyes were covered in what looked a blindfold. Food offerings, gold jewelry, and precious silks lay heaped about the thing's haunches.

Whatever they had interrupted it was clear that some sort of worship had been in effect. Thom wondered about the knife he remembered one of the members of the Ayyad had been holding, and the reason for their new guide's presence there.

This was all too much for a simple gleeman. Trust luck to have landed him in what looked to be a potential hornet's nest. He was not looking forward to this entirely new group of channelers, who might fast become murderously irritated all on their own for what Moiraine had done, and what he had done by bringing her here. He still did not know why Moiraine had lost control, or why it was that they lived.

He hurried to catch up to the women, hearing the other tell Moiraine that her name was Selke.

Times were certainly interesting.


End file.
